A Blue View

Has Hell Frozen Over? Fox News Calls McCain A Flip-Flopper Over DADT While Their Military Analyst Strongly Backs Repeal.

The clearest evidence yet that this policy is going to go ...

Jon Stewart On O'Reilly Factor

O'Reilly to Stewart: "Are you cognizant of the fact that your audience are primarily stoned slackers?"

Watch Part II.

Obama Facing Jon Stewart Barbs

Howard Kurtz:

Last week, though, the president was the punch line. After showing video of Obama speaking to schoolkids, the "Daily Show" host said in amazement: "You set up a presidential podium and a teleprompter in a sixth-grade classroom? . . . I'm not a political adviser, campaign strategist, et cetera, but that's not a great photo op in a middle school classroom."

It was inevitable that Obama would become a late-night target, at least when Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien and Dave Letterman have taken time out from sliming one another. But Stewart, who makes no secret of leaning left, is a pop-culture bellwether. And while the White House notes that Obama used the prompter to address journalists, not the students, the details matter little in comedy.

Stewart's barbs are generating partisan buzz. In a tweet, Americablog's John Aravosis invoked Martha Coakley's Massachusetts loss in trashing the prompter joke: "So is this the new post-coakley Jon Stewart, picking on Dems for insignificant BS to burnish his indie credentials. Third time in 7 days." The conservative Fox Nation site, by contrast, ran the video under the gleeful header "Jon Stewart Mocks Obama's Teleprompter Dependence."

"He's clearly become an important cultural arbiter," says Robert Lichter, director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. "He's pulled off the trick of being taken seriously when he wants to be and taken frivolously when he wants to be." ...

The Comedy Central star has always maintained that his primary job is getting laughs. And ideology aside, it was hard early on for comedians to get a fix on an eloquent new president with no outsize mannerisms. Even Fred Armisen's "Saturday Night Live" impression was pretty lame.

Now, of course, Obama is in rough political waters, which always makes for better material. In recent weeks, Stewart has accused the president of hypocrisy for breaking his pledge to televise legislative negotiations on C-SPAN: "This looks and sounds pretty bad for Obama." His "senior black correspondent," Larry Wilmore, solemnly informed the host that "Negroes aren't magic. . . . He's just suffering from the hard bigotry of high expectations." On another night, Stewart chided Obama for his cerebral style, saying: "You thought you could win us over with rational policy decisions and an even temperament?"

None of these jokes are particularly cutting, but what's telling is that they're being told at all. During the campaign, Lichter says, comedians made far more jokes about George W. Bush and John McCain than about Obama.

As a faux newsman who regularly skewers the media, Stewart is an icon to many journalists, especially those in television who sometimes copy his quick-cut editing techniques. As NBC anchor Brian Williams, a regular guest, told National Public Radio: "A lot of the work that Jon and his staff do is serious. They hold people to account, for errors and sloppiness."

But here, too, Stewart has been strafing all sides. It was no surprise last month when he made fun of Fox News hosts for supposedly celebrating Scott Brown's Senate victory, saying that reflected the network's "mission statement." But he also took on MSNBC's Keith Olbermann for calling Brown "an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, tea-bagging supporter of violence against women." Olbermann once "toiled in the fields of the factual," Stewart said during a clownish impression, but "now you're just kind of calling people names."

The next night, Olbermann played the bit and addressed Stewart: "You're right. I have been a little over the top lately. Point taken. Sorry." Last week Stewart zinged CNN's "best political team" for displaying brief Twitter comments to evaluate Obama's State of the Union address, and Chris Matthews for saying that while watching the speech he forgot the president was black.

The left's honeymoon with Obama ended long ago. Liberal commentators, including Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz, have taken shots at him for being too cautious or compromising on various issues. But there is something about a comic caricature that is indelible.

Obama, for his part, understands the importance of the late-night audience. He bantered on air with Leno and Letterman last year, and weeks ago chatted with Stewart backstage at the Kennedy Center Honors, while the comedian's wife, Tracey, teared up in the presidential presence.

We've all seen Jon Stewart fire his comic bazooka, against Tucker Carlson on "Crossfire" and Jim Cramer over CNBC's financial coverage. With Obama, he's merely using a popgun. But given Stewart's platform, even that has quite an echo.

More Haiti Cartoons On The Media & Right-Wing

More Palin & Fox News Cartoons

Palin & Fox News Cartoons

Leno Gets The Hook (cartoon)

 

"For Obama, a tough year to get the message out"

Dan Balz:

In winning the White House, Barack Obama's team earned a reputation for skill and discipline in dominating the communications wars with opponents. In office, virtually the same team has struggled, spending much of the past year defending the administration's actions on the two biggest domestic issues -- the economy and health care.

The White House has sought to sell health-care reform as a way to make coverage affordable and accessible to middle-class families. But it was also presented at various times as a cost-containment measure, a restraint on greedy insurance companies, a moral imperative to cover the uninsured and, to Democratic lawmakers, as a "can't fail" enterprise. The president and his aides sent mixed signals on the "public option" as well, voicing support for a government-run plan while signaling their willingness to see it die to get a bill passed.

On the economy, administration officials put themselves at a disadvantage with faulty projections of the jobless rate and an overly rosy prediction of how many jobs the stimulus package would create or save. Once they had put in place policies to deal with the worst of the crises Obama inherited, they moved on to health care and later to Afghanistan. The result was a perceived loss of focus in addressing public unrest about unemployment that has prompted a shift back to the economy recently.

It is an axiom of political communication that the president wields the world's biggest megaphone and is therefore capable of setting an agenda and dominating a debate. Obama has used his rhetorical skills repeatedly to good effect, but officials acknowledge that there are limits.

"There is real power there," White House senior adviser David Axelrod said of the president's platform. "But it's not a magic wand. The bully pulpit does not put people to work."

Obama's advisers have learned what previous White House teams came to realize when they arrived in Washington, which is the vast difference between campaigning and governing. Asked what happened to the Obama team, Mark McKinnon, who was a media adviser to President George W. Bush, said, "They're human. They've walked into the propellers of the federal government."

Axelrod said the challenge of managing and controlling messages in a campaign and in the White House is "the difference between tick-tack-toe and three-dimensional tick-tack-toe. It's vastly more complicated." <Continue reading.>

But That's Where I Confirm All My Beliefs! (cartoon)

 

I Miss Newspapers (cartoon)

 

Traffic To NYTimes.com Over The Course Of A Busy News Day

NY Times:

New York Times U.S. Traffic Data — Mobile and Web

New York Times World Traffic Data — Mobile and Web

The two videos [above] show the traffic to NYTimes.com on June 25, 2009, the day Michael Jackson died. The 24-hour period is compressed into a little over a minute and a half.

The top video represents readers coming to the Web site from the United States. The second video shows a map of our global readers. The circles indicate two things. First, the yellow circles represent readers coming to the main Web site from desktop or laptop computers, and the orange circles indicate readers using mobile phones to access our mobile site. Second, the size of the circles represents the number of readers at that moment in time. You can see the corresponding time stamp in the upper left corner of the videos.

Just watching these maps glow can be a mesmerizing experience, but there’s another fascinating piece of data within this particular day. At about 1 minute and 10 seconds into the video, at 5:20 p.m., you can see a huge pulse of readers coming to the Web site, both from mobile devices and personal computers. This huge traffic bump happened after TMZ.com broke the news of Mr. Jackson’s death. As the news started to filter across the Internet, traffic continued to ebb and flow throughout the evening.

It’s also intriguing to see the heartbeat of reader visits throughout any particular day. You can see more mobile traffic in the mornings and afternoons, as readers commute to and from work, and a large pulse of readers coming to the site around lunchtime.

Obama's Dilemma (cartoons)

     

The Politics of Avatar Are Not Going To Make The Right Happy

People always say Rupert Murdoch really only cares about getting audiences and making money: the same movie that he's counting on to break box office records is one that will give his "News" division apoplexy:

Change Comes To The U.S. - U.N. Relationship: We Finally Pay Our Bills

Another remnant of the Bush approach to foreign policy bites the dust. From Better World Campaign:

Each year, Congress is responsible for approving and allocating the payments requested by the President for U.S. assessed contributions to the United Nations' regular and peacekeeping budgets. Currently, the U.S. is assessed 22% of the UN regular budget and 26% for UN peacekeeping operations. For many years, due to Administration and Congressional underfunding, the U.S. fell well behind in its treaty-obligated payments to the UN. But in June 2009, Congress voted for and the President signed legislation that erases all the debts that had been building over the last decade.

U.S. Funding for the UN:  An Overview
To ensure that the U.S. remains in good financial standing and honors its obligations at the UN, the United States must continue to pay its dues to the UN in full and on time. While the June 2009 supplemental bill addressed part of this, more needs to be done.  Learn More

 

How do dues and contributions to the UN work? 
Funding for the UN and its agencies comes from two sources: assessed contributions to finance the UN’s regular budget, peacekeeping operations, and some specialized agencies, and voluntary contributions, through which more than half of the UN’s funding is provided. Learn More

Barbara Walters Interviews Glenn Beck

Obama Bemoans Vapid Press Coverage Of His Asian Trip

Apparently, this, Obama's Successful Asian Trip--Though You Wouldn't Know It From The MSM, bothered Barack Obama too. Here's Michael Scherer:

We are past, for the moment, the White House "war" on Fox, such as it was. (Obama did an interview with Fox News' Major Garrett a few weeks back, and General Petraeus is on Fox News Sunday today, with close Obama ally Dick Durbin.) Summer is gone too, and with it the "wee weed up" "silly season" of political coverage that Obama and his aides regularly decried. But President Obama's disdain for certain features of the national media remains alive and well. In a little noticed aside at the end of Thursday's jobs summit, Obama effectively painted the press as an obstacle to not just the much-needed economic recovery, but to America recovering its 20th Century position as an economic powerhouse.

Obama was responding to a comment from Farooq Kathwari, the CEO of furniture maker Ethan Allen. Kathwari had observed that the layoffs at his company that followed the economic collapse have actually provided an opportunity for the company to reinvent itself as something better. Obama agreed with Kathwari's point:

If we can recapture that sense that we're in this thing together and that we are willing to work hard, that America is not great because it's owed to us, but we've been great because previous generations have put in the hard work to get us there, then I'm confident that we're going to get through this tough time and the 21st century is going to be as good for us as the 20th was.

But then Obama made a turn, and went after the press, specifically the group of network correspondents who had interviewed Obama on his trip to Beijing. The full passage follows after the jump. 

But it's not going to come easily and it is going to require a level of cooperation and a willingness to work strategically together that we have not seen over the last several years. And frankly, this town and the way the political dialogue is structured right now is not conducive to what we need to do to be globally competitive. And all of you are leaders in your communities -- in the business sector and the labor sector, in academia, we even have a few pundits here -- it is important to understand what's at stake and that we can't keep on playing games.

I mentioned that I was in Asia on this trip thinking about the economy, when I sat down for a round of interviews.  Not one of them asked me about Asia.  Not one of them asked me about the economy.  I was asked several times about had I read Sarah Palin's book.  (Laughter.)  True.  But it's an indication of how our political debate doesn't match up with what we need to do and where we need to go.

Pretty pointed stuff, and I have little doubt that the president was actually irked by this at the time.  [He also remembers the content of the interviews inaccurately. See update below.] Through both the campaign and his presidency, Obama has made little secret of his disdain for some of the horse-race, tabloid elements of the press corps--though his political and communications staff are not above sometimes exploiting those same tendencies for their own benefit. Obama meets regularly off-the-record and on-the-record meals with columnists who his advisers see as more intellectually substantive (or politically influential). But he has not done the same with beat reporters, whom, as he suggested Thursday, sometimes do a disservice to the country with the journalistic equivalent of ambulance chasing.

"Americans ... the most entertained and least informed people on the planet" (cartoon)

 

Portia de Rossi Discusses Marriage Equality On The View

Watch her and Ellen's Oprah interview

Tiger Woods & The Media Cartoons

The Answer To Virginia's Santa Clause Question If Posed Today

 

International Newspaper Coverage Of Obama's New Afghan Strategy

Der Spiegel:

US President Barack Obama promised a large increase in the number of American troops in Afghanistan. But at the same time, he promised to begin pulling them out already in 2011. His speech offered many details, but little vision. And Obama failed to adequately explain a war that many no longer support.

London Times:

White House officials said that he had ordered the military to hit the Taleban hard and fast. He wants to show quick gains in the battle for the hearts and minds of the civilian population. Unstated, but as important to the White House, is the battle to shore up crumbling support for the war at home ...

President Karzai of Afghanistan has been told in the clearest terms that the plan is also heavily contingent on his performance. He must drop corrupt ministers and governors and institute real reforms within a Government that is at present viewed as a deeply unreliable partner. Mr Karzai has also been told that Mr Obama is holding the option to delay or halt troop deployments if his Government does not meet specific benchmarks, or targets, both on the political and military fronts.

Gordon Brown, who was briefed by Mr Obama on Monday, said the plan was “to create the space for an effective political strategy to work, weakening the Taleban by strengthening Afghanistan itself”. He added that the strategy called for “transfer of lead security responsibility to the Afghans — district by district, province by province — with the first districts and provinces potentially being handed over during the next year”.

Times of India:

US President Barack Obama's plans to boost troop numbers in Afghanistan need to ensure there is "no adverse fallout" on Pakistan, the country's foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

"Pakistan looks forward to engaging closely with US in understanding the full import of the new strategy and to ensure that there would be no adverse fallout on Pakistan," the ministry said in a statement.

The Afghan Taliban said that President Barack Obama's plan to send tens of thousands of extra troops to the country would not work and would only strengthen their resolve. "This strategy by the enemy will not benefit them. However many more troops the enemy sends against our Afghan mujahideen, they are committed to increasing the number of mujahideen and strengthen their resistance," the Taliban said in a statement e-mailed to media on Wednesday.

Obama's Successful Asian Trip--Though You Wouldn't Know It From The MSM

James Fallows has really taken the MSM to task for their inept coverage and analysis of Obama's Asian trip. Here's just one from Fallows to give you a sense:

When does an official part of the chattering class -- one of the weekend talkers, someone from the leading newspapers -- look back on these past two weeks in journalism's effort to represent reality and ask how the dominant narrative could have been so wrong, and wrong in a way that was easily noticeable at the time? Just curious. The guiding motto for the inquiry should be the deathless subhead on Tish Durkin's article: "Even through a veil of censorship and propaganda, the Chinese people managed a clearer view of Obama's visit than the US media did."

Andrew Sullivan provides a nice summary of what Fallows has been writing:

You won't find the results or analysis in the MSM which is why we have Jim Fallows at the Atlantic. If you did not read his brilliant dismemberment of lazy MSM reporting during the Asian tour, you can reprise the best here, here, here, here, here and here. If you haven't come away from this series of posts without a deeper and much better understanding of what Obma moved forward on this trip, then by all means return to watching cable news. But let's just look at the more recent headlines:

Item One:

Item Two:

Item Three:

Soldiers Have Been Coming Home From War Forever; Now It's On The News & YouTube

 

NY Times:

EARLIER this month at the Jacksonville Jaguars’ Military Appreciation game, Brandon Becar, 11, and relatives proudly stood on the football field in front of 45,000 people. The stadium’s giant video screen flashed a prerecorded greeting from his father, stationed in Iraq. Brandon grinned and flexed his muscle.

Suddenly the crowd roared. Brandon turned, bewildered. Dashing across the field toward him came a figure in fatigues: Maj. Kevin Becar, surprising his son with an early two-week leave. “We both totally zoned out where we were,” Major Becar recalled. “He was just bawling, and we melted into each others’ arms.”

Read this and weep. Go ahead. It’s that season. And these surprise military homecoming tales are the definition of heartwarming.

But view ’em — as have millions through TV news broadcasts, YouTube and countless other Web sites — and just blubber:

A 2-year-old opens the door to a costumed Santa. He gives her M&M’s and, gingerly, she hugs him. Then her stunned mother lets loose a yelp — “It’s Daddy!” — home six weeks early from Afghanistan. And while Mommy smooches Santa, thumping his chest (“You stinker!” “This is the best Christmas ever!”), the child looks quizzical. “Da-dee?”

In recent years, the popularity of surprise soldier homecomings, videotaped for posterity, has grown: dozens of such moments have been posted on the Internet. Fathers in fatigues — it’s almost always fathers — surprise children in classrooms, at a Valentine’s Day dance, popping out of a gift-wrapped box at a school assembly. Occasionally, as in a Veterans Day ceremony at a Tennessee elementary school, the local TV news lies in wait.

Network anchors sniffle. Public relations people beam. Parents describe unparalleled elation. But as these surprise reunions become embedded as this generation’s narrative of the returning vet, psychologists and others who work with military families question whether these surprise visits best serve the children themselves. Debates on blogs, like Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish, ask, Do these videos celebrate or exploit?

“Some people think it’s totally fine,” said Lillian Connolly, a mother of four who leads support groups for military families in Brockton, Mass. “But I recommend to families not to surprise children. The child has been without a parent for so long. The child can hold anger. You never know how they’re going to react.”

Mrs. Connolly, whose husband is on his third deployment in Iraq for the Army Reserve, added: “And in front of the media? I don’t think it’s fair.”

Candace Weir disagrees. She helped engineer a surprise for her daughters this month, dropping them with her mother for a weekend and driving to Fort Campbell, Ky., to pick up her husband, Specialist Chris Weir, just returned from Iraq.

That Monday morning, Kylee, 6, and Ashlyn, 4, attended an early Veterans Day assembly at Oak Grove Elementary School in Cleveland, Tenn. Who should stride in? The girls were floored — and then over the moon.

Months before, to prepare them for his mid-deployment visit, Mrs. Weir tried the calendar countdown. But the military could only give a two-week estimate of his date. “It was an emotional rollercoaster,” she said. “One day he was coming home — and the next he wasn’t.” The girls’ anxiety was particularly acute because their uncle died in Iraq in 2006; their father had volunteered to complete his brother’s service.

“My kids were upset and crying and thought Daddy was supposed to be home by now,” Mrs. Weir said. “The surprise thing worked better. And they really loved it.”

The adulation from classmates at these special moments can be reparative, parents say. Peers may finally empathize with the turmoil of a child whose parent is deployed. How bad could a little glory be?

“Nobody paid attention to me, it was all about Hannah,” said Master Sgt. Joseph Myers, of the video in June that vaulted onto national broadcasts showing the reaction of his 10-year-old — freeze-frame expressions ranging from incredulity to ecstatic relief — when he walked into her Randolph Elementary School class at Universal City, Tex.

Hannah still Googles her name to read new posts, he said, “and to check what ranking she is on the viewings at YouTube.”

FOR viewers, these moments have a voyeuristic magnetism. They are mini-dramas, representing the anxiety of the ultimate parent-child separation, with a radiant resolution. Institutions that facilitate them can’t help but benefit from the emotional spillover.

Chief among them: the military. Jon Myatt, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Military Affairs, said those called up — doctors, butchers, accountants like Major Becar — live in communities where people may not understand military families’ ordeal. These reunions and their publicity give a window into their lives. “You don’t get that on the nightly news very much,” Mr. Myatt added.

And while opposition to the Vietnam War corroded the reception of those veterans, he said, the intimacy of these public reunions helps viewers separate their feelings about current wars from the troops themselves: “Everyone was touched by this moment,” he said, “and that’s a wonderful outcome.”

Still, he said, surprises with younger children work best: “They’re not as self-conscious when it comes to crying and hugging their father. Teenagers are worried about their peers.” ...

The veteran’s homecoming is such a potent milestone that it’s been a theme in books, paintings and film — “The Odyssey,” Norman Rockwell’s “Homecoming G.I.,” William Wyler’s “Best Years of Our Lives.” Elizabeth Samet, a professor of English at West Point, viewed some reunion videos and noted that when some of the young children peered uncomprehendingly at a man in a uniform running toward them, she was reminded of Hector’s return to Troy in “The Iliad”: his young son “doesn’t recognize his father because he is still wearing armor.”

FOR centuries, whatever unfolded during those reunions — children shrieking with joy or clinging to their mothers’ knees — took place in privacy. Today, because of the orchestration and omnipresent cameras, the “surprise” homecomings make viewers essential to the reunion itself, much like reality TV shows. But what happens after the cameras are turned off?

That’s when the complex adjustment for soldier and family begins. “The expectation is that it will be wonderful and happy and we hope so,” said Mark Pisano, a school psychologist at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

“But sometimes, all he wants to do is sleep, because he has been sleeping in a hole in the desert for weeks,” he said. “That is understandable but hurtful.”

For children, he added, mid-deployment visits can be notoriously rough, because in a short period they are whipsawed between the euphoria of reunion and the anguish of departure. In workshops, he advises families to prepare their children. Minimize surprises.

Last month, Lillian Connolly’s husband returned for a mid-deployment visit. Staff Sergeant Joseph Connolly called from the airport; the plane had landed early. “I told him, ‘I don’t like to be surprised!’ ” Mrs. Connolly said. “ ‘You have to wait until I shower and wear the outfit I planned.’ He has me waiting a year, does he not? Well, he can wait 20 minutes.”

The deployments don’t get easier: “Every time my boys get off Skype with him, their eyes are full of water.”

Major Becar, home for a 14-day visit, stayed hidden at a friend’s home for a few days until he could surprise his son at the Jaguars’ game.

“I had no idea the effect it would have on everyone else,” he said of the reunion. The V.I.P. treatment, appearances on a morning TV show and sports talk radio. “It shows how patriotic everyone is and wants to see good news,” Major Becar said.

Reached 48 hours before returning to Iraq, Major Becar said Brandon’s school excused him to stay with his father throughout the visit. “I’ve been with him 24/7.”

He lowered his voice; Brandon was nearby. “The last couple of days as he looks at me, I know he’s thinking about me leaving. He’s starting to act differently.” The major began choking up. “It just kills me to think how tough this is for him.”

Jobs We Don't Need (cartoon)

Kaiser Health Poll: Public Option Not That Important To Most, Even Dems

As you can see from the 'Partisan Differences' chart below, the Public Option is 7th or 8th in importance to everyone: Dems, Indies and Repubs. From the Kaiser Family Foundation (poll, charts):

The November Kaiser Health Tracking Poll shows little movement in measures of public opinion about health reform from recent months.

Among the new findings is a ranking of the public's top priorities from among a list of elements of the legislation. There were both similarities and differences in priorities across partisan groups: while assuring the availability of affordable plans ranked in the top three priorities for Democrats, Republicans and independents, deficit neutrality ranked in the top three priorities for Republicans and independents and providing enough government financial help so as many uninsured people as possible can get health insurance ranked in the top three for Democrats.  Creating a public option ranked near the bottom of this list among all three groups. Even so, when asked if they favor or oppose having a public plan to compete with private insurers, a substantial a majority of Americans (59%) say they support the idea.

The poll asked supporters and opponents of reform to give their reasons in their own words and then tallied the results.  When asked to explain their support for reform in their own words, backers were most likely to express concerns about access, followed by concerns about the cost of health care and a belief that we need to fix the health care system.  Opponents also cited costs, fearing that they would go up as a result of reform, the belief that other national priorities were more important, and concerns about the government becoming too involved in health care, among other reasons for their opposition.

The poll also found that for the first time this year, more people report having seen anti-reform ads over the previous week than report seeing pro-reform ads.

The November poll, the eighth in a series designed and analyzed by the Foundation’s public opinion survey research team, examines voters’ specific health care issue interests and experiences and perceptions about health care reform.

Dr. Nancy Sneiderman: A Clear, Powerful Opponent Of Denialism

Dr. Nancy makes a compelling case for the scientific method and against knee jerk, pre-judged reactions, on yesterday's Meet The Press:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Obama's Bow (cartoon)

 

Today's Opposition Cartoons

Fox News Continues Morphing Into A Political Party. Tea Party Leader: “the media guys are the closest things we even have to a leader”

NY Times:

Glenn Beck, the popular and outspoken Fox News host, says he wants to go beyond broadcasting his opinions and start rallying his political base — formerly known as his audience — to take action.

To do so, Mr. Beck is styling himself as a political organizer. In an interview, he said he would promote voter registration drives and sponsor a series of seven conventions across the country featuring what he described as libertarian speakers.

On Saturday he held a festive campaign-style rally in The Villages in Florida, north of Orlando, in which he promoted his recently released book, “Arguing With Idiots,” and announced another book to come next August filled with right-leaning policy proposals gathered from the conventions.

Mr. Beck provided few details about his plans for the tour, making it unclear if he truly intends to prod his audience of millions into political action or merely burnish his media brand ahead of a book release.

Mr. Beck did say the conventions would resemble educational seminars, and he emphasized that while candidates may align themselves with the values and principles that he espouses, he would not take the next step to endorse them ...

As for the question of Mr. Beck’s intentions, “He might just be trying to sell books, but there are much simpler ways to sell books,” said Ari Rabin-Havt, a vice president at Media Matters, the liberal media monitoring group. He said Mr. Beck sounded more like a presidential candidate than a pundit.

Mr. Beck, having used his television and radio pulpit to lay out his list of the country’s impending problems — deficit spending, health care legislation that will “destroy” the economy, a dearth of “personal responsibility” — says he now wants to also provide solutions ...

Mr. Beck is not the only media firebrand trying to mobilize Americans disaffected with a Democratic-controlled government. The radio host Laura Ingraham is inviting candidates to sign a 10-point pledge on her Web site. Sean Hannity, on his afternoon radio show and prime-time Fox News program, is promoting “Conservative Victory 2010,” his name for the map on his site that will spell out questions for candidates.

And the former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who has a show on Fox News, has steered viewers to his Web site, where they can contribute money to his political action committee in support of conservative candidates.

Pundits have used their media stages to encourage political action before, but people like Mr. Beck and Mr. Hannity are taking on outsize roles now, political experts and conservative commentators say. One reason, they say, is the weakened state of the Republican Party.

The media figures’ roles may exacerbate the ideological feuds that are already roiling the party. For the diffuse tea party movement that taps into anti-government sentiments, “the media guys are the closest things we even have to a leader,” said Adam Brandon, the vice president for communications at FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy group.

These efforts are reminiscent of the Contract With America pledge made by conservatives during the 1994 elections, though some Republicans who are uncomfortable with media personalities taking on new political roles note that that effort originated with lawmakers.

Yesterday's Medical Test Whose Use Is Being Decided By A Popularity Contest: The Right & Wrong Ways To Debate The Mammogram Recs

Here's a perfect example of Denialism from the Chris Mathews show. Notice how no doctors or scientists are presented, very few scientific/medical objections are raised to the new mammogram recommendation and the few that are, are generally wrong (sorry Bazell, risk reward analysis is science). And while I generally like Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schulz, having been a breast cancer patient does not make you an oncologist and its therefore wildly inappropriate of her to be offering medical advice (especially when she has the power to codify her personal opinions into law):

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Now contrast that approach with this one presented on another MSNBC show, one actually hosted by a medical doctor, Dr Nancy Sneiderman. Perhaps not surprisingly, she sets the entire debate between medical professionals and they focus their comments on the science. It's also worth noting how the American Cancer Society rep seems to have an agenda designed to scare people (any chance so it's they keep donating to his group?). Notice how Dr. Nancy and the other expert both strongly object to the misleading way he presents the statistical data. 

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

We need to be seeing more of Dr. Nancy's approach and less of Chris Mathews: the only valid way to rebut the new mammogram & pap smear recommendations is a debate of their scientific & medical merits.

My point about Denialism is that the way the panel's recommendations are generally being rebutted in the media--by talking heads expressing their personal opinions, beliefs & preconceived biases--is not the way to do it. That's not science, that's religion.

Jon Stewart To Lou Dobbs: Why Does The Right Wing Equate Losing An Election With Tyranny?

Jon Stewart is a very smart guy. He gets across his progressive perspective in such a disarming yet devastating way. Watch his interview with Lou Dobbs as they discuss why he left CNN and why the right-wing acts like expanding health care access to lower middle class people is the end of American democracy.

Watch both parts to enjoy one of the best, most succinct ways I've seen of puncturing the right-wing's rationalizations of their Obama hysteria ... in the audacious form of a conversation with one of its worst offenders.

Part I (which was aired):

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Lou Dobbs Extended Interview Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Part II (available only online):

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Lou Dobbs Extended Interview Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Right Wing Pundits In Cartoons

A Key Difference Between The Great Recession & The Great Depression (cartoon)

 

The GOP's Alien

 

More Lou Dobbs Cartoons

Lou Dobbs Leaving CNN (cartoons)

German Murderers Sue Wikipedia Over Privacy. Wikipedia, And The NY Times, Defend Free Speech.

This NY Times story is interesting for 3 reasons: (1) the underlying issue of privacy vs. free speech, (2) the complexity of international relations when German privacy laws class with the American First Amendment, and (3) the way the NY Times effectively says to the murderers at the end of the story, 'go ahead, I dare you':

Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber became infamous for killing a German actor in 1990. Now they are suing to force Wikipedia to forget them.

The legal fight pits German privacy law against the American First Amendment. German courts allow the suppression of a criminal’s name in news accounts once he has paid his debt to society, noted Alexander H. Stopp, the lawyer for the two men, who are now out of prison.

“They should be able to go on and be resocialized, and lead a life without being publicly stigmatized” for their crime, Mr. Stopp said. “A criminal has a right to privacy, too, and a right to be left alone.”

Mr. Stopp has already successfully pressured German publications to remove the killers’ names from their online coverage. German editors of Wikipedia have scrubbed the names from the German-language version of the article about the victim, Walter Sedlmayr.

Now Mr. Stopp, in suits in German courts, is demanding that the Wikimedia Foundation, the American organization that runs Wikipedia, do the same with the English-language version of the article. That has free-speech advocates quoting George Orwell.

“He who controls the past, controls the future,” said a bulletin on the case issued Thursday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties group. Jennifer Granick, a lawyer for the group, said the case “really is about editing history.”

Floyd Abrams, a prominent First Amendment lawyer who has represented The New York Times, said every justice on the United States Supreme Court would agree that the Wikipedia article “is easily, comfortably protected by the First Amendment.”

But Germany’s courts have come up with a different balance between the right to privacy and the public’s right to know, Mr. Abrams said, and “once you’re in the business of suppressing speech, the quest for more speech to suppress is endless.”...

The court’s goals in the 1973 [privacy] decision were laudable, he said, but the logic might not be workable in the Internet age, when archival material that was legally published at the time can be called up with a simple Google search. The question of excising names from archives has not yet been resolved by the German courts, he said ...

GOP Opposition Cartoons

Sunday Afternoon Relaxation

Fox News gets the SNL treatment:

MSM Pundit Stupidity: Independent Voters Aren't A Cause, They Are A Symptom

Nate Silver makes some excellent points:

Karl Rove:

The trend here is that suburban and independent voters moved into the GOP column. The overall shift away from Democrats was 13 points in Virginia, 12 points in New Jersey, and eight points in Pennsylvania. [...]

Looking ahead, the bad news for Democrats is that the legislation that helped lead to the collapse of support for their party on Tuesday could yet inflict more pain on those foolish enough to support it.

The Washington Post:

But moderate and conservative Democrats took a clear signal from Tuesday's voting, warning that the results prove that independent voters are wary of Obama's far-reaching proposals and mounting spending, as well as the growing federal debt.

Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)

"Lesser mortals need to be worried about their independent voters because they have shifted strongly against Democrats in recent months. Independent voters tend to look at the issue, not the party, and they don't like a lot of what Congress has done."

This is what passes for analysis nowadays.

Why did Democrats lose in Virginia and New Jersey on Tuesday? Because independent voters moved against them, say the pundits.

This is true, insofar as it goes; Democrats lost independents nearly 2:1 in the gubernatorial race in Virginia, and by a 25-point margin in New Jersey. But it doesn't really tell us very much. It's a lot like saying: the Yankees won the Game 6 last night because they scored more runs than the Phillies. Or: the unemployment rate went up because there were fewer jobs.

In almost every competitive general election, the party that loses the contest has also lost independent voters. This is because most people (although less so in gubernatorial elections) vote strictly along party lines: the Democrat might be all but guaranteed 80 to 90 percent of the Democratic vote, and the Republican 80 to 90 percent of the Republican vote. Except in certain regions of the country where one or another party encompasses a particularly wide range of ideologies (such as NY-23's Republicans or vestigial "Solid South" Democrats), it's independents who swing the vote, since they represent the overwhelming majority of the votes which are up-for-grabs. This must necessarily be the case.

But in politics, it's not the proximate cause we're interested in but the ultimate one. Yes: independents went mostly for Republicans in New Jersey and Virginia (we could have inferred this without having to look at the exit poll). Yes, this "caused" the Democratic defeats. But what caused the independents to move against the Democrats? That's what we're really interested in, since that's what will have implications for future elections.

Too often in "mainstream" political analysis, once it is pointed out that independents have swung in one or another direction, the analysis stops. The pundit inserts his own opinion about what caused the independent vote to shift ("Obama's far-reaching proposals and mounting spending", says the Washington Post), without citing any evidence. It's a neat trick, and someone who isn't paying attention is liable to conclude that the pundit has actually said something interesting.

But in New Jersey, there's literally almost no evidence that the Democrats' agenda had anything to do with Jon Corzine's defeat. Voters who cited a national issue were more likely to vote for Corzine, and voters who cited a local one, the Republican Chris Christie.

In Virginia, the evidence is certainly a little stronger, insofar as the national agenda may have affected the lopsided turnout (the electorate which turned out Tuesday had voted for John McCain by 8 points, a near-reversal of the actual results). Even there, however, the quarter of the electorate that cited health care as their main issue went for the Democrat Deeds 51-49. And in NY-23, which was supposed to have been the ultimate smackdown of the Democrats' agenda, the Republican Conservative candidate unexpectedly lost.

Part of the problem is that 'independents' are not a particularly coherent group. At a minimum, the category of ‘independents’ includes:

1) People who are mainline Democrats or Republicans for all intents and purposes, but who reject the formality of being labeled as such;
2) People who have a mix of conservative and liberal views that don’t fit neatly onto the one-dimensional political spectrum, such as libertarians;
3) People to the extreme left or the extreme right of the political spectrum, who consider the Democratic and Republican parties to be equally contemptible;
4) People who are extremely disengaged from politics and who may not have fully-formed political views;
5) True-blue moderates;
6) Members of organized third parties.

These voters have almost nothing to do with each other and yet they all get grouped under the same umbrella as 'independents'.

But that's getting away from the point. Independent voters are treated as a cause, when all that they really are is a symptom. The key is in figuring out what ails the patient.

A Bad Night For Progressives

I don't buy the media driven spin that yesterday's election is a referendum on Obama (neither does Jon Stewart) but I do think it was a bad night for Progressives and the progressive agenda. Marriage equality lost in Maine, the conservative who stifled his ideology to appear moderate won in Virginia and the Democrat defeated the Right Wing's candidate in NY's 23rd. 

So unless the GOP powers-that-be are complete idiots (and they're not), the Tea Party phase of the Party is over and the GOP's future electoral chances just went up. While the long term drift of moderates away from the GOP will likely continue, the potential dream for Progressives of having every Republican candidate (at least every one not in the South) face a hard-to-elect, Right Wing opponent in their next primary has passed.

And as for Maine ... sigh. How many elections would have been won in 1954 if school desegregation were put to the vote? The whole notion of putting a minority's rights up to a vote by the majority is kinda crazy isn't it?

So what do you think? What's next for Progressives?

What Does Last Night Mean?

Jon Stewart doesn't think it means much (and their pundit parody towards the end is must see TV):

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The Wash Post, however, thinks there are warning signs for both parties--but especially the Dems--in the results (here's my overall take on yesterday's results: A Bad Night For Progressives):

Off-year elections can be notoriously unreliable as predictors of the future, but as a window on how the political landscape may have changed in the year since President Obama won the White House, Tuesday's Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey delivered clear warnings for the Democrats.

Neither gubernatorial election amounted to a referendum on the president, but the changing shape of the electorates in both states and the shifts among key constituencies revealed cracks in the Obama 2008 coalition and demonstrated that, at this point, Republicans have the more energized constituency heading into next year's midterm elections.

The most significant change came among independent voters, who solidly backed Democrats in 2006 and 2008 but moved decisively to the Republicans on Tuesday, according to exit polls. In Virginia, independents strongly supported Republican Robert F. McDonnell in his victory over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds, while in New Jersey, they supported Republican Chris Christie in his win over Democratic Gov. Jon S. Corzine.

For months, polls have shown that independents were increasingly disaffected with some of Obama's domestic policies. They have expressed reservations about the president's health-care efforts and have shown concerns about the growth in government spending and the federal deficit under his leadership.

Tuesday's elections provided the first tangible evidence that Republicans can win their support with the right kind of candidates and the right messages. That is an ominous development for Democrats if it continues unabated into next year. But Republicans could squander that opportunity if they demand candidates who are too conservative to appeal to the middle.

McDonnell pitched his campaign toward the center of the electorate, offering Republicans a model for how to reach independents. But the uproar in New York's 23rd Congressional District, where a populist conservative uprising drove the hand-picked Republican nominee out of the race, showed that ideological warfare still threatens the party.

Beyond the shift among independents, there were other worrisome indicators that the coalition Obama attracted last year is a shrunken force, at least for the time being. One question all year has been whether, without Obama on the ballot, Democrats could attract the new voters who went to the polls in 2008. In New Jersey and Virginia, the answer was no.

Many of the young voters who came out in big numbers in 2008 and strongly backed Obama stayed home Tuesday. In Virginia, voters under age 30 accounted for 10 percent of the electorate, half the share they represented last year. In New Jersey, their turnout also was halved.

Meanwhile, the percentage of voters age 65 and older jumped significantly in Virginia and rose measurably in New Jersey. In both states, these voters tilted slightly more Republican than they did a year ago.

The Evolution Of [Male] Gay Life On TV

Deal Between Obama, Senate & MSM To Protect News Sources

NY Times:

The Obama administration, leading Senate Democrats and a coalition of news organizations have reached tentative agreement on legislation providing greater protections against the fining or imprisonment of reporters who refuse to identify confidential sources.

Under the deal, made public Friday, federal judges could quash subpoenas demanding testimony or information from reporters if the judges determined that the public interest in news gathering outweighed the need to uncover the source of a leak, including, in some circumstances, unauthorized disclosure of classified government information.

Protection under the so-called shield law would also be extended to unpaid bloggers engaged in gathering and disseminating news ...

“We expect this proposal to move forward with bipartisan support, and the president looks forward to signing it into law,” said Ben LaBolt, a White House spokesman, who noted that the Obama administration was “the first administration in history to support media shield legislation.”

The protection would apply not only against subpoenas for reporters’ testimony or information but also against investigative efforts to obtain phone and Internet records to find out who had been talking with them.

Under the agreement, the scope of protection for reporters seeking to shield the identities of confidential sources would vary according to the nature of the case: civil, criminal or national security.

Jon Stewart's Take On Obama Vs. Fox News

Another great perspective on why Fox isn't really a news organization (check out the others in A Blue View's media category). Well worth watching:

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Rise Of The Conservative Media

Media Matters does a good job of showing how industry funded operatives' lies end up being channeled through Fox into the MSM and go on to show how dangerous they can be to the progressive agenda:

Wallace's "News" Repeatedly Echoes Beck's "Opinions"

I'm sure it's just an amazing coincidence how often Chris Wallace seems to channel Glenn Beck:

30 Examples Of Why Fox News Is Not Legit

Eric Boehlert:

Why the Beltway press has invested so much time and energy in recent weeks defending Fox News, with one scribe even claiming that the White House's public critique of the network was "dangerous to press freedom," and why the press refuses to acknowledge what's so obvious about the cable channel's political pursuits, remains baffling.

The facts regarding Fox News' lack of professionalism seem rather obvious (as I detail below 30 different times). And that ought to be plain for Beltway journalists as well. But whether for reasons having to do with external professional, social, or political pressures, many journalists have opted to pretend that Fox News is a serious outlet, that it's just like its cable and network TV news competitors.

They insist that any suggestion that Rupert Murdoch's cable channel isn't legitimate is completely off-base and that the White House is not even allowed to have an opinion on the issue. Indeed, ABC News' Jake Tapper suggested it was not "appropriate" for the administration to tag the channel as illegitimate. (Tapper himself can't tell the difference between the programming that Fox News and ABC News produce.)

The rush to defend Fox News is an odd one, because I don't remember the same type of the circle-the-wagons defense when the previous Republican administration openly waged war on The New York Times and NBC, two news outlets whose standards far outshine the kind of pseudo-reporting Fox News produces on a daily basis. That Beltway media elites have decided to rally around Fox News of all entities remains as puzzling as it is short-sighted.

The truth is, journalism is not difficult to practice, nor is it tough to identify. Journalists aren't licensed, and anyone can try their hand at it, as the Internet has made clear. So there is no higher authority declaring what is and isn't journalism. But the craft, like obscenity, is instantly recognizable in its true form. <Continue reading.>

Activism, Not Opinion, Is What Disqualifies Fox News As News

For some reason, this very important point--which I wholeheartedly agree with--has been missing from the debate over the Obama Administration's fight with Fox News: it's not what Fox says, but what they do that makes them an opposition political force, not a news organization:

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Last Week, Obama Was Too Weak, This Week He's Too Aggressive

Would the pundit-class in Washington please make up it's mind and stick to one story line for more than a few days?  Last week, Obama was too weak to push health care through ("he needs to be more like LBJ and knock some heads"). This week he's knocking too many heads at Fox news & the Chamber of Commerce.  Here's today's too aggressive example from the Politico:

A White House effort to undermine conservative critics is generating a backlash on Capitol Hill — and not just from Republicans.

“It’s a mistake,” said Rep. Jason Altmire, a moderate Democrat from western Pennsylvania. “I think it’s beneath the White House to get into a tit for tat with news organizations.”

Altmire was talking about the Obama administration’s efforts to undercut Fox News. But he said his remarks applied just the same to White House efforts to marginalize the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a powerful business lobby targeted for its opposition to climate change legislation.

“There’s no reason to gratuitously piss off all those companies,” added another Democrat, Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia. “The Chamber isn’t an opponent.”

POLITICO reported earlier this week on an all-fronts push by the White House to cut the legs out from under its toughest critics, whether it’s the Chamber, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck and the rest of the Fox News operation.